| Chapter 1: | An Introduction to Polarity, Ambiguity, and Kinship |
|
|
entry into the laboratory’s sacrificial economy. In this laboratory context, as would be in the case in other laboratories, ‘sacrifice’ assumes particular meaning; it is used specifically to reference an exchange economy of equally mammalian, but substantively unequal, human and nonhuman bodies. This ambiguity is a key ambiguity for the practice of science: The slippage and ambiguity that are created by the dual affinity/dissimilarity of rodents and persons can be controlled and made productive in the lab in the very doing of science. The biological and genetic affinity between humans and rodents allows for human-meaningful, human-applicable data to be gathered, and the dissimilarity between rodents and humans allows rodent bodies to be regarded as productive and fully dispensable equipment. This crucial ambiguity in the practice of science—the subject of my third chapter—is manipulated to generate data that are highly relevant to the human body without injurious consequences for the human body.
Fleshy and Indistinctive Kinships
Recognising only the polar locations in the lab, Acampora (2006), in an invocation of Heideggerian language, claimed that rodent animals in the lab are not only physically restrained but are also ontologically reduced to the status of ready-to-hand tools, objects for investigation and examination. In the event that a research animal presents itself as unsatisfactory for a particular scientific use, it might be regarded as faulty equipment. I think it is very difficult to decide that the ontological status of the rat is the same as that of other, inanimate laboratory equipment. In my study, the scientists did regard animals as equipment, but this was not a fixed position of rodent research animals for the scientific practitioners in the laboratory. Instead, rodent research animals were ambiguously positioned between research equipment and beings with which scientists could and did make relationships that were founded on interpeci-al transivity. I argue herein that rat and mouse research animals very often occupy rather more ambiguous positions in the laboratory than Acampora’s assessment permits. Just as they often occupy polar